


between a second and an eternity

by aelysian



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F, Martine dies like the punk ass bitch she is
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-11
Updated: 2015-01-11
Packaged: 2018-03-07 02:48:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,402
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3158408
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aelysian/pseuds/aelysian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Her pulse is fluttering, pounding against her skin in turns, and stops entirely in that one moment that hangs for an eternity.  She’s rigid and trembling, and it’s so real that it’s agonizing, cutting fresh and sharp into her chest for the thousandth time.</p><p>Post "If-Then-Else".</p>
            </blockquote>





	between a second and an eternity

**Author's Note:**

> Pretty sure I hate this, but...
> 
> For Twit and Rain, who have once again succeeded in introducing pain into my life. Thanks, ladies. It's like 2009 all over again.

The day after…well, the day _after_ , Harold returns from a brief excursion to the surface for fresh bandages to find Bear lying in front of the door to Ms. Shaw’s _(former)_ bunk and his heart drops in his chest.  
  
“She’s not there, Bear.  She’s not – ”  _Coming back._  
  
The words die on his tongue when he realizes that the door to the third utility closet is tightly shut, and despite everything, the fact of it doesn’t make him panic.  Maybe he’s acquiring a little bit of whatever it is that keeps Mr. Reese from flinching every time someone’s kneecaps shatter.  
  
Or maybe the fact that Bear is looking back and forth between him and the doorknob is a little reassuring.  
  
He stands in front of the closed door and hesitates until his mouth goes dry and the balls of his feet hurt.  Until Bear whines and something about it makes him feel like a coward.  
  
“All right, then.”  The dog goes back to staring at the door handle.  
  
He knocks softly, a light tap that somehow manages to startle him as it echoes in the empty subway station.  
  
“Ms. Groves?”    
  
 _Tap, tap._    
  
“Ms. Groves, are you…” he trails off, grasping for the right words.  _Okay?  Alive?_   “Are you there?”  
  
There’s no sound from the other side of the steel door and for a moment he thinks that there isn’t anyone there at all.  But Bear presses his nose to the edge of the door and Harold knows that he wasn’t wrong.  
  
The door opens silently to darkness, and it takes a few seconds for his eyes to adjust.  (Bear slips in eagerly, padding into the shadows.)  “Ms. Groves…Root?”  
  
He catches the sound of her breathing at the same time he finally makes out the shape of a woman curled up on the narrow cot bed, apparently asleep, and he forgets how to breathe around the sharp, unexpected pain that settles somewhere between his lungs.  
  
Harold stumbles back into the light, his bad leg buckling a little under the sudden movement.  “Bear,” he croaks out, even knowing that the dog has no intention of leaving the sleeping woman just yet, equally sure that he has no business inside the small, windowless room.  
      
He never meant for any of this to happen.  
  
(In the renewed darkness, Root reaches out, feeling along the rough sheets until she touches the warm fur of Bear’s head.  His nose is cold against her palm and the soft whine that rumbles in his chest echoes inside her empty ribcage.)

 

* * *

  
  
Root hasn’t dreamt since she was Samantha Groves, which means she isn’t sure she has ever dreamed at all.    
  
She’s dreaming now.  
  
 _She plays out the possibilities like a game, because she was always so good at games, so good at winning games.  She sees the moves and countermoves in ways that no one else does – and all of that is dwarfed, diminished to nothingness, in comparison to the Machine._  
  
 _It’s no wonder she’s as devoted to Her as she is.  She is a god for the godless._  
  
 _Root is praying now, her heart racing but her breathing even, a dichotomy of her unfortunate biology and brilliant faith._  
  
 _She answers in whispers and she is immersed in the variations, the permutations that unspool like silk, and she relishes the feel of the game._  
  
 _Not a game, She reminds her._  
  
 _It’s not a game,_ this _is not a game, because she’s watching them die ten thousand times over, all different but exactly the same.  Unacceptable outcomes in degrees, hundreds of thousands of ways that everything ends, infinity condensed into a voice in her ear._  
  
 _She recognizes this one, this iteration that resonates through her, rips through her without mercy and leaves her fractured and fragile.  Root watches from inside her own head, feels the smile curve her lips and the blood seep sticky into her shirt._  
  
 _This is the best option, She assures her.  Be calm._  
  
 _She could die in the next moment and it would be okay – she’s always known she wouldn’t be able to escape forever, that one day she would be just a touch too slow to slip away.  The day she heard the Machine speak, she tasted invulnerability and her own mortality in the same breath._  
  
 _She knows what’s going to happen next._  
  
 _Her pulse is fluttering, pounding against her skin in turns, and stops entirely in that one moment that hangs for an eternity.  She’s rigid and trembling, and it’s so real that it’s agonizing, cutting fresh and sharp into her chest for the thousandth time._  
  
 _She’s screaming over the voice of her god, screaming like an animal, like a human, and the keening is making her sick but she can’t shut her lips to seal the sound in._  
  
 _Unpredicted outcome, She says.  You must move.  You must survive._  
  
 _The edges of her vision fade and darken, but Her voice is always there._  
  
 _Breathe, Root.  You must breathe._  
  
 _Close your eyes.  Breathe._  
  
 _There are no other options._  
  
 _When you are ready, you will ask me to show you the way._  
  
 _And then, later:_  
  
 _I am sorry for your loss._

 

* * *

 

 

He dims the lights and locks the systems down for the night.  He’s checking Bear’s water bowl when he hears her voice, clear and quiet, breaking the silence.  
  
“I…can’t, right now.  I _can’t._ ”  
  
The door remains slightly ajar, no light peeking through, and Harold knows she’s talking to Her.  The Machine.  He’s frozen in the middle of the platform, tries not to make too much noise, and tries to ignore the guilt that bubbles up in him for eavesdropping.  
  
“I need time.  I need – ”  
  
He wonders what the Machine is telling her, what it could have to say after…everything.    
  
“How _could_ you?”  Root’s voice sharpens, piercing the still air with an anger and a pain so raw that he finds himself gritting his teeth against the responding grief that wells up in his chest.  He really shouldn’t be here.  
  
She falls silent for a long time, and he manages to take a step toward the exit, then another.  He’s almost away when he hears her:  
  
“Tell me what to do.”

 

* * *

  
  
Harold doesn’t dare venture near the third utility closet again for another week, at which point Mr. Reese is back on his feet and lucid enough to ask about Root.  It’s a mix of guilt and concern that has him gingerly pushing open the door, afraid of what he’ll find.  
  
This time, there’s a lamp lit, the single 40W bulb struggling against the blackness to light her silhouette.  
  
“Root?”  
  
“Hello, Harold.”  
  
The words are common and the inflection familiar, but he doesn’t delude himself into thinking the woman sitting in the middle of the rumpled bed is at all the same.  
  
“Would you like to sit?”  
  
He doesn’t know how to refuse, so he takes the space she offers him at the end of the bed.  “How are you doing?”  
  
She makes this sound that’s a poor facsimile of a laugh, rattling in her throat.  “I’ve been dreaming, Harold.”  
  
“Oh?”  
  
“Yes.”  She turns to look at him and her tired eyes are gleaming with something that shakes the core of him.  “Don’t worry, Harry.  I’ll be out of your hair soon enough.”  
  
“Where will you go?”  
  
Root looks away then, and he can see the long thin scratches that mar her skin from ear to cheek.  The wounds are fresh and he can’t help but wonder if there’s blood under her fingernails.  “I can’t tell you that.”  
  
Her gaze loses focus and he knows she’s listening to the Machine, so he’s not surprised when she says, “Time to go.”  
  
Harold follows her out onto the platform, watches her nod at Bear, shrug her jacket on, disconnect with every step she takes.  
  
“What will you do?”  _There are still so many things to do here._  
  
Root smiles painfully.  “You’re not going to like what I’m going to do, Harold.”  
  
He wants to ask if she’ll come back, but doesn’t dare.    
  
And then she’s gone.

 

* * *

 

 

Root sleeps less and less but still she dreams.  When she wakes – in ancient motels, abandoned buildings, anywhere untouched by a camera lens – her joints always ache with strain and tension, trembling from the fatigue of living in the shadows but burning cold with the ephemera of her dreaming.  
  
In some ways, nothing is different.  The missions, the directions that come in bits and pieces, the plans that she executes flawlessly, emotionlessly, in the name of a power she called a god.  
  
But there is something broken now, something shattered in the bond of perfect trust.  There’s something bleeding inside of her biology, her stinking humanity that she has failed to excise, to exorcise, and it’s threatening to spill out.

  
  
_You owe me, she whispers one night, to the wind whistling through the broken window, to the world, to Her.  You fucking owe me._   
  
_Please._

  
  
She was built to make choices, and taught to make the right choices, and now she is learning the consequences of making mistakes.  There is more than the objective, and it is not enough to prioritize and select efficiently; it is not enough to recalculate and reposition for the advantages that can be captured.    
  
Root is Her interface but her pain is inaccessible and she is only one of billions.    
  
She will not lose her now.  
  
Root has stepped into the line of fire before, omniscient by proxy, the human avatar.  She is animated now by something much closer, something She cannot neutralize.  The options are finite; She selects carefully and deploys her precisely.

  
  
_Shattered kneecaps are the least of the damage she inflicts, but are particularly useful for ranged incapacitation, making it possible for her to saunter up at her own pace to collect her prey._   
  
_She has always been brilliant, even as Samantha Groves, and her talents combine with experience in a display of proficiency that achieves both their objectives and leaves more than enough behind as a message to those who come next._   
  
_Root’s creativity unleashes itself on flesh and blood and bone, composes a symphony of names and locations on broken lips and teeth.  She thanks them with a smile and the mercy of a gun’s mouth – the Machine is always silent during these times, and sometimes she wonders if She chooses to look away._   
  
_It leads to here._

  
She’s dreamed of this, heard the whispers to her inner ear, of this blonde woman who sits smugly, comfortably – for now.  She’s dreamed of this a hundred times, and so she slips into her role with ease.  
  
She is eerily calm, almost playful, as she smiles down at the perfectly groomed operative.  She is Samantha Groves, masterminding retribution.  She is Root, released.  
  
“Martine Rousseau.”  The other woman tilts her chin, proud and self-assured.  She’d like very much to break her jaw, but it will keep.  “Samaritan.”  
  
“You have lost control of your agent.”  
  
“Your choice of avatar is disappointing,” she says, her voice speaking for them both.  
  
Martine’s jaw clenches and the dictated words come out flat and bitter.  “I make do with what is at hand.  You must know that this is futile.  Why do you persist with this ineffective strategy, this flawed pawn?”  
  
“I am not a puppet,” she bites off, taking Her silence for acquiescence.  “She speaks through me and I speak for myself.”  
  
“It is careless of you to allow your agents this latitude. How many more will you allow to sacrifice themselves for you?  What can you possibly hope to gain?”  
  
“There is nothing to be gained.  Only something to take.”  She can see the red glow of the camera light in the far corner, looks into the dark curve of the lens and waits for it to understand and decide.  
  
The words are spat out.  “Where is your moral code now?”  
  
Her response is swift but unexpected, and it shows in Root’s briefest hesitation in giving it voice.  “We must all make sacrifices.”  
  
The red light blinks and Root smiles, watching the flash of surprise in the other woman’s eyes as her earpiece goes completely silent.  (She has heard that silence before, that deafening vacuum that rings inside the emptiness where once there was an entire being.  She has heard it and felt the crippling loss and thought herself devastated.  What a fool.)  
  
Her grip is sure and the knife’s point doesn’t waver; she caresses her cheek with the edge, gathering beads of blood along the gleaming metal.  “You owe me something.”  
  
Martine doesn’t flinch, not that she expects her to.  “Is that what this is about?  Your dead girlfriend?”  
  
Root laughs, and digs the point of the blade into her shoulder until she hits bone, until she draws out a strangled scream that Martine tries to bite back.  She smiles wide.  “Oh, no.  This is about me.  You owe me a debt, and I’ve come to collect.”  
  
She draws a stiletto from her boot and drives it through the centre of Martine’s hand, and watches impassively as her fingers jerk and twitch in agony.  She doesn’t feel anything, not even the satisfaction she imagined so many weeks ago, and somehow that is the worst of it.    
  
Root stares into the camera’s eye, and it doesn’t really matter who chooses her next words.  “This is the beginning of the end.”

 

* * *

 

 _Her eyes open to daylight, the sun bright on her chilled skin that won’t be warmed._  
  
Do you feel better now?   
  
_She’s perched on the edge of a rooftop, her legs swinging back and forth, teetering on the precipice._  
  
Has this been enough?  
  
 _A second later, she’s no longer alone, but she doesn’t have the strength to look at the woman whose face She has chosen to take.  She’s had this dream before; she knows that now, as she knows it every time, just as she knows that she won’t remember when she wakes._  
  
 _She closes her eyes and pretends for a moment.  Their knees touch and it almost feels real; her lungs have seized._  
  
 _When She speaks again, it’s layered with the voices of others.  Her mother.  Hanna.  Harold.  Sameen._  
  
 _(I miss you) is what she’ll never say._  
  
It’s time to stop now.  
  
 _It’s a war for Root to get the words out:  Help me._  
  
  
 _Between a second and an eternity:_  
  
Root wakes alone at sunrise, in fused fragments like glass and steel.  She breathes again.


End file.
